Speed of light around Earth, 7.5 laps per second

If you could make light bend around Earth, it would orbit 7.5 times per second (near the surface). That's 0.13 seconds per orbit!
Play around with the SPEED in settings, as I uploaded this at 60 frames per second.
*Animation by Dr. James O'Donoghue using NASA imagery.
*Share/use as you wish, credit is appreciated.

[VAVORiAL]

They say nothing is faster than light, but I just put this video on 2x.
How 'bout that science, huh?!

[masterwill]

A great representation of the speed of light.

[reddirtroots]

Love these! Gives good perspective on the speed of light.

[soupbonep]

This is really cool!! As are all of your videos. I'm glad that you suggested that we play around with the speed of the video because that was fun and interesting!

[dekelyosifon]

You: (Picture Of Usain Bolt)

The guy she tells you not to worry about:
(speed of light in this vid)

[baniok]

that's a nice video, thanks james

[diveinnjim]

this kind of put things into perspective eh?
Wow!

[freshavocado]

You can slow down the video to 0.25 and count up to seven laps and it will count as one second

[ronaldrobinson]

BEYOND MY E-BIKE'S SPEED! GREAT!

[medici]

I believe the second line in your description should say 0.133 seconds per "orbit." And you are right; playing with the speed IS fun. But I'm not going to run your Earth-Mas animation at 1/4 speed!

[NecroAngelDeclaresWar]

and there goes superman reversing time

[azertuu]

Superman went a little faster to turn back time

[Riley_MDS]

*AND THIS, IS GOING TO BE FURTHER, BEYOND!*
"screaming while orbiting the earth at a speed of light"

[gypzino]

che video imprezionante ! zono imprezzionato!!

[madichelp]

I think it's still surprisingly slow. Yes it is incredibly fast for human scales, but it's still slow enough that you can see it as a blur going past if you look at it from space, as in this video. And on interstellar scales, it's painfully slow.

[lucastaylor]

I can’t work out whether it’s moving east to west, or west to east.
Would be good to see the SoL at earths surface, though looking at it may induce travel sickness

[dooknoogetchard]

I hope nobody does a break check in front of that light.

[РусланДёмин-уж]

Не указано, насколько замедлен процесс на этой модели относительно наблюдателя (реального времени). Не хватает пояснительной записки!

[theotherside]

*Waiting for when we will build planes that travel faster than the speed of light.*

[maddox]

I put it twice faster, didn't this get me to the speed 100% faster than the speed of light?